Pirates: Matti-Jay and Dub Adventure, #2

By Sean Monaghan

Captain Bethanie Morello loves her ship and crew. When they encounter a mysterious vessel, their day takes a bad turn. A very bad turn. 

Elsewhere, Matti-Jay and Dub head out, exploring the universe, never expecting to deal with pirates. Looks like their day might have a few bad turns of its own.

 

A Matti-Jay and Dub Adventure, from the author of The Chronicles of The Donner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triple V Publishing
• Release date: Aug 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393766230

Sean Monaghan

Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music. Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Captain Bethanie Morello checked the telemetry from the approaching vessel and cursed again.

This was going to be a bad day.

A very bad day.

Bethanie's ship was named Lotus Blossom Wind. She was a beautiful vessel. Over four hundred meters long, with a capacity for sixty passengers and more than two hundred tons of cargo. She could leap between stars as easily as the passengers could dive into the zero-gee swimming pool.

Bethanie was in the well-appointed bridge. The Lotus Blossom Wind was less than two years old. Everything still seemed new and clean. The air in the bridge had the slightest sweet nipo fragrance to it, overlaid with a minuscule hint of spicy cindaro caffee. The caffee was a new trend among the crew. Something they'd taken up since their visit to Newcombe a few months back.

Bethanie's pilot and navigator sat in the two forward seats. Plush and comfortable, all the bridge seats had full control sets and headset feeds. Bethanie sat just behind them, right in the middle of the bridge, with a view through the wide transparent forward canopy.

They were coming up on Ythl, a warm, watery planet. The Blossom carried a load of plasticized copper-aluminium, spices and replenish seeds. As well as thirty two passengers.

The planet hung directly ahead. Half in shadow. They were only a few hours out.

Time to intercept, one minute forty seconds, Nidel said. Nidel, the pilot, was an old hand. His skin was wrinkled and spotty, but his eyes had a shine like no one else's. He would have been in the training academy with Bethanie's grandfather. Nidel never made any bones about Bethanie's youth.

Youngest captain in the Sodammar fleet. Youngest captain ever.

Nidel sipped from his caffee. Very calm in the face of the approaching vessel.

Maneuvers? Claire, the navigator said. Claire was closer to Bethanie's age, though she had entered the academy through the usual step by step channels, unlike Bethanie's accelerated process.

The other two bridge seats were unoccupied. The crew of twelve worked on rotation. There were always at least two of them on the bridge.

Continue on our present course, Bethanie said. Attempt to call them again.

Unidentified vessel, Claire said, sounding very much like the neutral space traffic control bots that would guide them to the ground. Please acknowledge.

The speakers in the bridge hissed and crackled with background interference. But there was no response.

Unidentified vessel. Please acknowledge.

See, Nidel said. If we had big old guns here we could show them those. Click. Look at that buster. We can shoot you down.

We don't know that it's someone we want to shoot down yet, Claire said.

Moot point anyway. Seeings as how we can't shoot anyway. Nidel glanced back at Bethanie.

Guns would be useful, Bethanie said. Though we're not a warship.

Unidentified vessel. Please acknowledge. Claire glanced back at Bethanie too. The vessel is changing course. Looks like maybe swinging around to parallel us.

Still no transponder? Every vessel was obliged to have an operating transponder. The little device gave all the details on the vessel—location, heading, velocity, identification, cargo, destination. It was a simple way of keeping the space lanes clear.

A simple way of keeping everyone honest.

There was no good reason for a vessel to be without a transponder. Two possibilities: the transponder had malfunctioned somehow. Very unlikely, with all the backups and redundancies built into a ship's systems now days.

The second possibility was simply that the vessel didn't want to be identified.

Of course all vessels ran standard pingdar systems. To keep track of stray debris and rocks. The chances of hitting something were tiny, but it was better to be informed.

Nidel had picked up the ping reflecting from the vessel as it came in at them.

Problems? someone said.

Bethanie looked back. It was Pella, the relief navigator and ship engineer. She was wearing a garish yellow and purple shirt and black leggings with hefty black boots. Her hair was a mess, as if she'd just woken up.

Could be pirates, Claire said.

Oooh. Exciting.

Not exciting, Nidel said. Bad. I like the look, by the way. It's very 'you'.

I try. You want for me to break out the weapons? Pella said. Remember I went on that training week about repelling boarders.

A month or so back, Pella had taken a company paid course on ship safety and defense. She'd instigated a weapons locker. Small arms and blades.

Bethanie had hoped never to have to use them.

Their trip from Sodammar to Ythl was just a six day leap. The Blossom's leap coils had been refurbished and she was running smooth and fast. The leap had been very accurate. They'd come out of leap space just a hundred thousand oloms from the surface. Nicely into a good, accurate trajectory to make orbit in a few hours.

Wake the crew, Bethanie said. We need all hands.

Got that, Pella said. She slipped quickly back to the companionway connecting the bridge to the rest of the ship.

Passengers? Claire said. We might—oh boy!

The other ship practically appeared right in front of them.

Evasive, Nidel said. His hands grabbed at the air in front of him, taking the invisible controls. Nidel's retina implants allowed him to interact directly with the ship. His eyes would be showing him the layout of space and all the ship's data.

The Blossom shifted. Tugging at Bethanie. The seat's soft foam hardened, holding her in place.

Come right, Claire said.

The other vessel was big. A mess of colors, picking up the starlight. Big blue sections, yellow sections, purple, gray, orange. And a jumble of shapes. It was as if the thing had been put together by a kid with clever dough.

Come right, Claire said, voice stern. Pitch down twenty degrees.

In the canopy the other vessel seemed to rise. Just the Blossom taking evasive maneuvers.

A port opened on the side of the other vessel. A dark circle appeared.

We have weapons targetting, Claire said.

Full ahead, Bethanie said.

Already Nidel had the Blossom underway. The acceleration shoved them back into their seats.

The other vessel passed by overhead. Vanishing from view.

They are... opening fire, Claire said.

Continuing evasive maneuvers, Nidel said. But we're heavy. Don't have the fuel to keep this up for—

The canopy exploded.

Bethanie gasped. The bridge opened to vacuum.

CHAPTER TWO

Sitting in the cool rec room aboard the wonderfully expanded Blue Defender , Matti-Jay Menthony enjoyed sipping on tall bulb of slightly fermented Rielder claneberry juice. The fermentation gave the juice an almost electric tang.

The rec room sat just below and behind Blue Defender's bridge.

When they'd left Aerienne, the Ao had given her the gift of expanding Blue Defender from a little runabout with little more room than a single seat cockpit, into a multi-cabin vessel. She was still pretty cramped, especially with the five of them aboard, but it had become home.

The rec room was almost soporifically warm. It was an oblong sphere, with couches all around. That was just fine in zero gravity. When the ship set down on a planet, the couches reconfigured across a flat form.

Right now, they were on the leap from Rielder to Ythl. Blue Defender's drive was now and Ao leap drive. Far more efficient and smaller than the old human-designed jumptech drive that had carried the ill-fated Donner, to her rendezvous with disaster.

Another hour or so and Matti-Jay and her crew would arrive at Ythl. It was nice to take a moment to rest and relax before the hard work began.

As emissaries of Earth, Matti-Jay, Charlie and Kendra had a big responsibility.

They'd only been doing this for six months now and it was still new and fun. With the strange worlds they'd visited so far things seemed like they would always be new.

They had just left Rielder. A planet with vast areas of vine fields that had been startling. Just two hundred thousand people, with orchards run by robots. So much of the planet had been fabulously pristine, with high icy mountain peaks, and deep oceans teeming with some truly weird denizens.

The people had been friendly. Intrigued by the human crew. The Rielder locals knew of Earth, but were fascinated by its isolation. Matti-Jay and the crew were getting that a lot. In a vast swathe of the galaxy populated by people who were more or less human, it was odd that people from Earth were only now beginning to reach out.

Matti-Jay sipped again, enjoying the invigorating flavor.

Hey! Charlie said, popping his head through the overhead hatchway. Charlie was just a few years older than Matti-Jay. His bright eyes stared at her.

Hey yourself. Something up?

Are you actually drinking that stuff? I don't know how you can stand it.

Matti-Jay took another long sip and laughed as Charlie screwed his face up.

Must be an acquired taste, he said.

No, you just have an undeveloped palette.

Funny. Hey, Dub says we're about to exit the leap and come up on Ythl. I know you like to see when we arrive.

Dub was one of two robots on the crew. Dub currently had six legs, a curling tail and four manipulator arms. She changed herself around at a whim. The only thing that remained constant was her football-shaped head, with its array of lenses and antennas.

I do like when we arrive, Matti-Jay said. We must be running early, then.

Little bit.

The view of a new planet was always a treat. They all looked different, but somehow all looked the same. Icy poles and green landmasses surrounded by blue oceans. All swaddled in swirls of clouds of various thicknesses.

Of course there were a lot of planets that were very different—rocky deserts blistering in stark sunlight, ice-balls with frozen atmospheres, gas giants which were mostly atmosphere, thousands of kilometers thick.

Mostly, the Blue Defender had been visiting human-occupied worlds. Mostly very Earth-like.

Matti-Jay thumbed the bulb of juice closed and pushed off from the seat. She followed Charlie through the narrow, short companionway up onto the bridge.

Kendra and Dub were there, piloting the vessel through the last of the leap.

Kendra was wearing fresh dark blue ship overalls. She had her hair tied back in a high ponytail. In the zero gravity, the ponytail splayed out, more like some kind of seaweed, or some illustrator's idea of an explosion.

Two minutes, Kendra glanced back. Nice to see you, High Ambassador Pro Tempore.

You too, Crew Lackey and Deck Scrubber.

Nice, Kendra said. You're getting better with your comebacks.

Technically, Matti-Jay was the High Ambassador Pro Tempore, Earth emissary to the Ao and other human species around the galaxy. Kendra liked to throw the title around, as if it meant something between them.

Matti-Jay liked to find a stupid rank or title for Kendra. It was kind of nice the way they could rib each other.

"Ready for transition to normal space," Dub said. Her synthesized voice had acquired a nice softness of late. Almost as if someone was singing in harmony with her.

Take a seat, Kendra said.

Matti-Jay and Charlie swung themselves into seats and the strap systems grabbed hold. The transition was usually very smooth, even if it left a tingle through all your muscles.

It was weird to let others